Key Ingredient to Business Success

by Don Harkey

I had lunch with the owner of a business brokerage firm yesterday. For those of you who don't know, a business broker helps people buy and sell businesses. This puts them in a unique front-row position to watch businesses undergo leadership change. Good brokers spend a lot of time analyzing the business they are helping to sell, so they have a lot of information on the current state of the business as well as information on the old and new leadership.

This particular brokerage recognized their unique perspective and conducted a study of businesses they had sold going back 5 years. They were looking at the ones that were successful and the ones that had failed and tried to find the factors that lead to success. They expected to learn that cash flow or maybe location had a strong influence on the future success of a business. They simply failed to find any significant correlation.

Refusing to believe that business success was random, they decided to go through their list of companies and gather the general impressions of the brokers that worked with the new owners. This was a much less scientific approach, but the results were interesting. The general impression was that the successful business owners were more passionate about what they do.

Consider the implications of this... a business located in the right place with strong cash flow with an owner who is less than engaged is more likely to fail than a business in the wrong place with poor cash flow and an owner who is on fire about making the business succeed.

Passion truly is productive!!